Planeload after planeload of US troops arrived home from the Persian Gulf to an emotional welcome from relatives. Iraq handed over 40 foreign journalists and two American soldiers whom it had captured.
Links: Iraq, USA, Journalism

1991 Mar 9

Secretary of State James A. Baker the Third, on a fact-finding mission to seven countries, visited Kuwait following its liberation from Iraq.
Links: Iraq, USA, Kuwait

1991 Mar 13

President Bush, during a visit to Ottawa, Canada, warned Iran against seizing Iraqi territory in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War.
Links: Iraq, Canada, USA, Iran, BushHW

1991 Mar 17

Allied commanders from the Gulf War held a second round of cease-fire talks with Iraqi officers; the Iraqis were told they could not move their warplanes inside Iraq for any reason.
Links: Iraq, USA

1991 Mar 20

A US jet fighter shot down an Iraqi warplane in the first air attack since the Gulf War cease-fire.
Links: Iraq, USA

April Glaspie, the US ambassador to Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Saddam Hussein had lied to her by denying he would invade Kuwait.
Links: Iraq, USA, Kuwait

1991 Mar 21

A UN Security Council panel decided to lift the food embargo on Iraq.
Links: Iraq, UN

1991 Mar 22

A US warplane shot down a second Iraqi jet fighter that had violated the cease-fire ending the Persian Gulf War.
Links: Iraq, USA

1991 Mar 23

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein shuffled his Cabinet, but kept in place his hard-line ministers of interior and defense to direct a crackdown on rebellion against his rule. A popular uprising had been prompted by Pres. Bush and 15 of 18 provinces were liberated, but no American help followed and Husseinís forces crushed the intifada.
Links: Iraq, USA, BushHW

1991 Mar 24

In liberated Kuwait, banks reopened for the first time since Iraqi troops had shut them down the previous December.
Links: Iraq, Kuwait

The Bush administration indicated it would not aid rebels seeking to overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Links: Iraq, USA, BushHW

1991 Mar 27

In a surprising flap, President Bush publicly disagreed with General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who claimed he had urged further fighting in the Persian Gulf War at the time Bush ordered a cease-fire. Schwarzkopf later apologized to Bush.
Links: Iraq, USA, BushHW

1991 Mar 29

General H. Norman Schwarzkopf publicly apologized to President Bush for questioning his judgment about calling a cease-fire in the Gulf War.
Links: Iraq, USA, BushHW

1991 Mar

In 1996 Pentagon officials said American troops destroyed an Iraqi ammunition depot in March 1991 that may have contained chemical weapons.
Links: Iraq, USA

1991 Apr 2

Iraqi state media reported that only a few more days were needed to stamp out fighting with Kurdish rebels, who reported renewed skirmishes around the strategic oil center of Kirkuk.
Links: Iraq, Kurds

The UN adopted Resolution 688, which condemned Sadam Husseinís suppression of the Kurds and demanded respect and political rights for all citizens. A safe haven was established above Iraqís 36th parallel.
Links: Iraq, UN, Kurds

US military planes began airdropping supplies to Kurdish refugees who were facing starvation and exposure in the snow-covered mountains of northern Iraq. The United States warned Iraq not to interfere with the relief effort.
Links: Iraq, USA, Kurds

1991 Apr 8

US Secretary of State James A. Baker the Third toured refugee camps near the Iraqi border, praising relief efforts but saying "hope must be given to these people for a return to home."
Links: Iraq, USA

Speaking at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, President Bush warned Iraq the United States would "not tolerate any interference" with the international relief effort for Kurdish refugees.
Links: Iraq, USA, Kurds, BushHW

1991 Apr 14

The final withdrawal of American combat troops from southern Iraq began, 88 days after the United States launched its massive offensive to drive Saddam Husseinís forces from Kuwait.
Links: Iraq, USA, Kuwait

Turkey began moving thousands of Iraqi Kurds from a border settlement to camps farther inside Turkey, in a major policy shift for President Turgut Ozalís government, which had previously kept the refugees in the mountains.
Links: Iraq, Turkey, Kurds

1991 Apr 16

President Bush announced that US forces would be sent into northern Iraq to assist Kurdish refugees.
Links: Iraq, USA, Kurds, BushHW

1991 Apr 20

US Marines landed in northern Iraq to begin building the first center for Kurdish refugees on Iraqi territory. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the US commander of Operation Desert Storm, left Saudi Arabia for home.
Links: Iraq, USA, Saudi Arabia, Kurds

1991 Apr 21

US Marines in northern Iraq began building the first safe-haven settlement for Kurdish refugees. General H. Norman Schwarzkopf arrived at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida to a heroís welcome.
Links: Iraq, USA, Kurds

1991 Apr 24

A Kurdish rebel leader announced the guerrillas had reached an agreement in principle with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to end the Kurdsí two-week rebellion.
Links: Iraq, Kurds

President Bush met at the White House with UN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar, who relayed Iraqís rejection of a US-backed proposal for a UN civilian force in northern Iraq.
Links: Iraq, USA, UN, BushHW

1991 May 19

Martial-law courts in Kuwait began trying people accused of collaborating with Iraqi occupation forces, sentencing one man to life in prison for wearing a Saddam Hussein T-shirt. The trials came under international criticism, and were halted.
Links: Iraq, Kuwait

1991 Jun 29

President Bush, speaking to reporters in Kennebunkport, Maine, refused to rule out the possibility of renewed military action against Iraq, calling its interference with UN inspectors "very disturbing."
Links: Iraq, USA, BushHW

1991 Jul 8

Reversing earlier denials, Iraq disclosed for the first time that it was carrying out a nuclear weapons program, including the production of enriched uranium.
Links: Iraq, Nuclear

1991 Jul 25

A deadline for Iraq to provide full details of its weapons of mass destruction passed, with US officials indicating military action was not imminent.
Links: Iraq, USA

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1991 Jul 28

President Bush warned Iraq it would be making "an enormous mistake" if it failed to disclose its nuclear weapons program to United Nations inspectors.
Links: Iraq, USA, UN, Nuclear, BushHW

Iraq said it would "play host" to all foreign citizens in the country who were from "aggressive nations," and place them in military and civilian targets until the threat of war was over.
Links: Iraq

1991 Aug

American soldiers detected mustard agent from their Fox mobile chemical-detection laboratory in a large metal tank in Kuwait that was probably left behind by retreating Iraqi forces.
Links: Iraq, USA, Kuwait

U.N. weapons inspectors left Bahrain for Iraq to renew their search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.
Links: Iraq, UN

1991 Sep 23

UN weapons inspectors in Baghdad discovered documents detailing Iraq's secret nuclear weapons program and said Iraq was close to building a bomb. This triggered a standoff with Iraqi authorities.
Links: Iraq, UN, Nuclear

The US scattered some 118,000 land mines in Iraq and Kuwait during the Gulf War.
Links: Iraq, USA, Kuwait

1991

Oriana Fallaci recorded the poignant soliloquy of Dakel Abbas (21), a drafted Iraqi soldier recovering from wounds in Kuwait. In 2002 Fallaci authored "The Rage and the Pride."
Links: Iraq, Kuwait, Journalism

1991

Government forces of Iraq began battling the Supreme Assembly for the Islamic Revolution.
Links: Iraq

1991

142 aircraft were flown to Iran from Iraq to escape destruction at the outset of the Gulf War. Tehran repainted the planes and used them for its own forces. In 1997 Iraq appealed to the UN for help in getting the planes back.
Links: Iraq, Iran

1991

In Iraq in the first 8 months following the war some 47,000 children under the age of 5 died from war-related causes.
Links: Iraq, Kids

In Mahaweel, Iraq, every day for three weeks, Iraqi soldiers brought truckloads of rebellious Shiite Muslims to a lonely cornfield near the ruins of Babylon. The victims were shoved into shallow pits and shot. Bulldozers pushed the earth over them, burying some alive. In 2003 a mass grave yielded more than 3,100 bodies. Local Iraqis said as many as 12,000 other bodies from the same massacre might be buried in the area.
Links: Iraq, Atrocities

1991

The International Atomic Energy Agency placed a seal over storage bunkers holding conventional explosives known as HMX and RDX and PETN at the Al-Qaqaa facility south of Baghdad as part of U.N. sanctions that ordered the dismantlement of Iraq's nuclear program.
Links: Iraq, UN, Nuclear

1991

The United Nations Compensation Commission was established after the alliesí victory in the Gulf War to settle claims filed by individuals, corporations and governments who suffered due to the war.
Links: Iraq, USA, UN, Kuwait